Avengers: Infinity War Writers Detail Scrapped Thanos Origin Story

Avengers: Infinity War scribes Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely shed light on a scrapped origin story that would have shown a younger Thanos (Josh Brolin) attempting to save his home planet of Titan from looming ruin caused by overpopulation.

“We wrote some scenes, sort of flashbacky scenes of a young Thanos on Titan trying to make his case,” Markus told Backstory Magazine. McFeely added Thanos would have tried to appeal to his senate.

“And part of the reason it went away is it got a little too Jor-El on Krypton making his case, you know?” Markus said. “It was the sort of thing you could imply without having to see.”

Markus and McFeely instead doled out necessary history in scenes shared between Thanos and adopted daughter Gamora (Zoe Saldana) and again during Thanos’ meeting with Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) on the now desolate Titan.

“And it’s a scene that’s only doing one thing. What we settled on were all those scenes that explained any history he had with Gamora,” McFeely said.

“Those are doing more than one thing, because they’re highlighting his relationship with the daughter he’s going to have to sacrifice.”

Backstory Magazine notes the cut scene would have taken place during the Titan sequence, before Thanos is ambushed by Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Spider-Man (Tom Holland) and the Guardians of the Galaxy.

Directors Anthony and Joe Russo also told the magazine an early version of Infinity War, which was even more Thanos-centric, had the tone of a gangster movie when Thanos acted as narrator.

“There was one where Thanos narrated the whole movie, and it sort of had the tone of a gangster film, where you’ve got this heavy narration from his point of view,” Joe Russo said.

“It was an interesting experiment, taught us a lot about him as a character, but it ultimately didn’t work as a movie structurally. The narration was repetitive, but it led us to the sort of smash-and-grab structure we ultimately used.”

Some of Thanos’ origin story surfaced in young adult novel Thanos: Titan Consumed, where Thanos’ plight was ignored by his own father. Yet another cut scene dropped from the Titan sequence was Thanos’ encounter with the Living Tribunal, who would have been summoned by Doctor Strange when battling the Mad Titan.

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